Blockchain innovation and framing in the Netherlands

Blockchain innovation and framing in the Netherlands: How a technological object turns into a ‘hyperobject’

Lagendijk, Arnoud (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)
Hillebrand, Bas (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen; Nyenrode Business Universiteit)
Kalmar, E. (TU Delft Science Education and Communication)
van Marion, I. (TU Delft Applied Sciences)
van der Sanden, M.C.A. (TU Delft Science Education and Communication)

Applied Sciences

2019

Blockchain emerged as a well-defined technological object with limited applicability applications (e.g. Bitcoin). Embraced by more and more ‘stakeholders’, Blockchain has turned into a bounty of possibilities and promises. This raises the question whether Blockchain is turning into an overextending, affective ‘hyperobject’. Adopting a post-ANT topological perspective, and using mixed-methods analysis, this paper traces Blockchain's recent developments in the Netherlands. A media analysis of newspaper items shows a telling divide between stakeholders (including incumbents) stressing Blockchain's radicalising prospects and those (notably involved knowledge and policy workers) warning of its overhyping and lack of governance capacities. A detailed analysis of strategies and operations of the key enabler, the Dutch Blockchain Coalition, reveals how much effort has gone into face-to-face encounters and communication to frame and script the object. Yet, this also causes Blockchain to proliferate in all kinds of directions, turning into a hyperobject beyond the reach of intellectual and practical grasp.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:d624b7c6-f8a1-4f80-be31-4d85e703a61a

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2019.101175

2021-09-06

0160-791X

Technology in Society, 59

Accepted Author Manuscript

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2019 Arnoud Lagendijk, Bas Hillebrand, E. Kalmar, I. van Marion, M.C.A. van der Sanden